Guerrero: Failure of State to observe sentence in the Radilla case

Tita Radilla. Photo @SIPAZ

During the audience called for on 22 June by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) to present the report regarding the Mexican government’s observance of the sentence in the case Rosendo Radilla Pacheco v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos (23 November 2009), Tita Radilla Martínez, Rosendo’s daughter, expressed her denunciations, because this resolution has not been observed, and her father has not been found or even searched for.

In a communiqué, the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights reported that according to Tita Radilla, though Mexican authorities have undertaken several actions supposedly having to do with observing the sentence, “this process has not been one of healing.” Furthermore, she stressed that “the authorities have not taken into account our expectations, and in this sense they have carried out different actions that end up revictimizing us, as it is with the act of recognition of responsibility that does not include our presence, or the failure to put the victims in charge of excavation and investigation.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights supported the position of the victims and their representatives, urging the Mexican State to accelerate its observation of the sentence and to attend to the needs of the victims in this process. Rosendo Radilla Pacheco was arrested at a military checkpoint in 1974, and he has continued to be disappeared since that moment.